In a world of bouclé armchairs, I was a velvet settee, and nothing proved it more than the room I was standing in right now.
“Make a note that I want the welcome basket to be set on the table by the balcony doors on future sailings,” I said to my cousin, and last-minute assistant, Bailey. My mother had insisted I bring her when my aggressively capable assistant, Michael, had come down with a case of cat scratch fever and wasn’t able to work on the cruise because his armpits hurt so badly.
And I loved my twenty-three-year-old cousin to bits, truly, but she was no Michael—and also I was pretty sure she only agreed to come because it was a free cruise on a ship with eleven different bars.
“And going forward, the bouquets near the accent walls need to have more eucalyptus, I think. I want more pop against the yellow.” I squinted at the bouquet again, wondering if eucalyptus was the right vibe for July. Maybe I should save it for the winter sailings. “Or possibly bay leaves. Write down ‘bay leaves.’ Bailey?”
I turned to see my cousin patently not writing anything down, as she was staring at the door—and fuck me in my nonswollen armpit. This was important! Details mattered! It was why I’d insisted on doing a walk-through when I’d embarked: because I wanted to make sure that every single element of a guest suite—the gold sconces, the artisanal toiletries, the vegan chocolates handmade by radical nuns—was ready for that crucial snap or reel or post. It wasn’t good enough for things to look good in real life. They had to look good online too. And actually it still wasn’t enough for things to look good online; the posts from our cruises needed to look good enough to convert the curious into the believing. Into guests who then became tripod-carrying missionaries and evangelized the good news of aesthetic ocean travel to the world.
I needed these believers because I needed Lemon Tree Cruises to work. If the cruise line didn’t work, that set me behind on expanding into hotels, and if I was behind on hotels, then I was behind on the Rest of the Plan.
Cruises! Hotels! Rest of Plan!
In that order!
Plans were what made the world turn; plans were how money was made. Plans were how you took uncertainty and loneliness (and the gnawing suspicion that maybe your life was a cold and empty crater) and shoved those feelings into little boxes so that they couldn’t bother you anymore. In the words of the Bible: Consider the lilies of the field, and look at how they always have kanban boards and planners with highlighters in muted pastels.
“Bailey,” I said patiently. “Are you—”
“Tall,” Bailey whispered, her brown eyes awestruck. “Hot.”
I saw symmetrically faced people all the time, so I wasn’t bracing myself when I followed my cousin’s gaze to the woman standing in the doorway. And then I wished I had braced myself, because holy Dyson Airwrap, Krysta Morton was a cold, cold mommy straight from my dirtiest daydreams.
The low ponytail she’d sported for her entire tenure guarding Isaac Kelly
was gone and had been replaced by a sharp undercut, the white-blond hair on top just long enough to pull into a neat bun. Her skin was fair, her mouth was a full but stern line, and her eyebrows were so light that they were almost hard to see from across the room, although I could guess that they were pulled together in irritation.
Blue eyes, a black suit with a white button-down shirt, and sunglasses on top of her head completed the vibe. A vibe that was fully don’t fuck with me, with just a dash of but if you behave, I might deign to sit on your face later.
God only knew why that was so hot to me. Probably trauma.
But she was here to do a job, and so was I, and I was already four minutes behind the schedule I’d made for myself this morning on the way to the Long Beach cruise terminal.
“Krysta,” I said, stepping forward and offering my hand and my biggest smile. “Thank you so much for taking this job. I know it was a little spontaneous, but I appreciate it.”
She strode into the suite to meet me and shook my hand with a very firm clasp. Once. And then she pulled her hand back like she’d reached her quota of human touch for the day.
“Your manager was very persistent, Ms. Hayes,” Krysta said. She was looking behind me—not at Bailey, but at the balcony doors and the steps leading to the second story of the suite. “I assume she sent over my rules.”
“Yes!” Which was the truth.
“And you read them?”
“Of course!”
Okay, that part was not . . . as truthy. I generally tried to be diligent about reviewing everything sent my way, because details mattered, et cetera, et cetera, but just between you and me, these were the kinds of details that didn’t interest me as much as the TikTok-ability of a cruise ship’s outdoor pool. So as Krysta strode deeper into the suite and then took the stairs two at a time, I discreetly pulled out my phone and summoned up the email with her bodyguard-engagement agreement.
Ah, okay, here were the rules:
The Rules:
- No sneaking off alone.
- No secrets.
- No bodyguard-client fraternization.
- No olives.
I could see why Krysta didn’t want any bodyguard-client fraternization, given that shaking my hand had seemed like a chore (which, excuse her, but did she even know that she had touched some of the most exfoliated and moisturized hand skin in the business???).
But olives? What the
fuck.
“We need to talk about your sleeping arrangements,” announced Krysta, coming back down the stairs with the staccato tread of a military general.
Bailey blinked up at her with big horny eyes. I really just needed to put this baby bird in a bikini and send her out to the pool, because she was clearly already in cruise hookup mode.
Krysta continued, “You’ve got me sleeping across the hall, but there are multiple entries to your suite, and I think it’s safer if I sleep in the second bedroom, so I can be closer in case of a breach.”
That was not the plan. The plan that I had planned on. This wasn’t it!
“Bailey’s sleeping there,” I said. “She’s my assistant, and I need her close. Plus, she’s excellent at handling breaches—she’s basically a breach legend. So.”
Krysta stared at me.
“I promise I’m not being high-maintenance,” I said. I had a lot of experience explaining why what I wanted was perfectly normal and reasonable. “It’s just that I need someone nearby to record my thoughts, observations, and notes for improvement. It’s the maiden voyage, you know,” I added.
Krysta’s blond eyebrow lifted, but she still didn’t speak.
“And across the hall isn’t so far away. And that room is such a fun room! It’s next to a slide that leads down to the speakeasy—”
Bailey stepped forward with her hands clasped together, all noble voluntarism. “Addison, I think Krysta has a very important point about staying in the suite with you. As your cousin, who cares deeply for your unbreached security, I think we should switch rooms, and we should do it right away, and you know what, I’ll go get my things right now. For your safety. And stuff.”
I saw through her game. She wanted to be close to that slide, and the speakeasy, and the potentially sexy people therein. But before I could call her on it, Krysta said, “Good,” in a voice that clearly signaled the decision was final.
My watch buzzed on my wrist, and I glanced down. I was now nine minutes behind schedule. Shitnuggets!
“Fine,” I said, “but, Bailey, this doesn’t mean you’re getting out of assistant duties. Let’s go.”
I started walking to my next destination, a reluctant cousin trailing behind me, and when I made to shut the suite door, Krysta was there too.
“Where are you going?” she asked. “The rules clearly say no sneaking off alone.”
“A of all,” I said as we started walking down the hall, “I’m not alone. I have my cousin-assistant. B of all, my manager agreed to those rules, not me!”
“You will follow them, Ms. Hayes,” growled Krysta. Ooh, I did like that growl. Then she stepped in front of me. “Tell me where you want to go.”
“To the theater!” I sang, delighted in having gotten my way somehow, although we’d need to be brisk if we wanted to make up for the lost
nine minutes.
A muscle in Krysta’s jaw flickered, like I’d just told her we were going to a self-catheterization workshop, but then her detached expression returned. It looked unfairly hot on her, with the high cheekbones and high forehead, the deep blue eyes.
Yes, stare coldly at me, Mommy. And then tell me what a bad girl I am!
Alas that hooking up with my bodyguard wasn’t part of the plan, and also that I was sure Krysta had a healthy, if mild, dislike of me.
It could have been a fun cruise.
Krysta had done her cruise ship homework and led us straight to the theater via service doors and back hallways to avoid the still-embarking passengers. We emerged into the backstage hallway-cum-dressing-room, which was filled with open pots of glittery makeup and what could only be described as panic.
God, I hated stage entertainment. Had since I was a kid and my mom strapped Dansoft shoes to my feet and made me go twirl on a stage. Something about having an audience right there, able to see the edge of your wig or the sweaty creases in your makeup, was just unbearable. But ships needed sure-to-be-beloved shows, and there was only one sure-to-be-beloved story I loved enough to imagine commissioning a cruise ship musical for.
“Where is my brother-doctor-dad?” the makeup artist called over the fray. “I need brother-doctor-dad in the chair right now. And tell flannel-dad not to touch that mustache until the adhesive dries!”
I skirted around some extras slurping iced coffee while they waited in line for costumes, and stepped onto the stage, looking for the director and the scriptwriter. I heard Bailey ask one of the extras where they got their drinks and resigned myself to losing my assistant to the siren song of caffeine.
But I didn’t have time to argue with her about it. I needed to be done in the theater in ten minutes so I could go check on the kitchens, the spa, the margarita bar, and then make it through the mandatory muster drill before I went to my suite and had exactly forty-five minutes to change, refresh my hair, and practice my welcome speech.
As I spotted the person I’d hand selected to pen my musical tribute to Twilight at the far end of the theater, my watch buzzed. ...
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